Bob Ney

"The House ethics committee is back in business," according to The Hill today.

It was reported that Committee Chair Doc Hastings (R-WA) and Ranking Member Alan Mollahan (D-W.Va.) have reached an agreement over staffing the committee, an impasse that has rendered the committee useless for several months.

In the wake of the scandals surrounding Reps. Tom DeLay (R-TX), Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA) and Bob Ney (R-OH), Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) has called for an independent investigation into the House Ethics Committee, which has failed to act in any of these cases.

Public Campaign today partnered with Common Cause, Public Citizen, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and two dozen of Rep. Hastert's constituents in calling on the Speaker of the House to appoint an outside counsel to investigate the House lobbying scandals surrounding Reps. DeLay, Cunningham, Ney and others.

According to Mike Allen of The Washington Post, Republican strategists are beginning to worry that the recent ethics scandals surrounding Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) might have a negative impact on his colleagues in the 2006 elections.

This morning we launched a petition campaign to call on Speaker Hastert to appoint a special counsel to investigate Tom DeLay. In America, you can't buy a jury. It's illegal. But DeLay, though his PAC, has given money to 225 or the 232 GOP members. We can't get an impartial ethics committee from that jury pool. Congress can't police itself.

Along with two other organizations, Public Campaign Action Fund sent this letter to U.S. Representative Bob Ney (R-OH) to ask him to answer just a few questions about his knowledge of facts in yesterday's Washington Post story: